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Richard van der Wurff and Klaus SchoenbachAudience Expect from Good Journalism?

Civic and Citizen Demands of News Media and Journalists: What Does the

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New Challenges to Credibility

Civic and Citizen Demands of News Media and Journalists: What Does the Audience Expect from Good Journalism?

Richard van der Wurff1 and Klaus Schoenbach2

AbstractWhat do citizens in the Netherlands expect from journalism? A large-scale survey shows that many audience expectations align fairly well with what experts and journalists consider important democratic functions of the press. We refer to these expectations as Civic Demands. In addition, more at odds with the profession’s view, the audience wants journalism to take Citizen Demands into account: the complaints and wishes of citizens. We explore how these demands relate to audience characteristics and news media use. Findings suggest that journalists and citizens could very well cooperate in securing a future for high-quality journalism.

Keywordsaudience analysis, journalism, media and society, quality of reporting, role conceptions

The current media environment is characterized by intense competition, commercial-ization, declining news media trust, and increasing opportunities for user participation. It challenges journalists to reconsider the delicate balance between professional auton-omy, social responsibility, and public demands.1 Reactions to these challenges fluctu-ate between the claim that listening to what the public wants is the duty of a responsive journalism and the warning that this would actually mean a sell-out to the audience, resulting in a (further) decline of news media quality.2 In other words, audience

1University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands2Northwestern University in Qatar, Doha, Qatar

Corresponding Author:Richard van der Wurff, Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam, Kloveniersburgwal 48, NL–1012 CX Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Email: [email protected]

538974 JMQXXX10.1177/1077699014538974Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterlyvan der Wurff and Schoenbachresearch-article2014

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434 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 91(3)

members are perceived either as consumers, primarily interested in infotainment and horse-race reporting about politics, or as knowledgeable and discerning citizens, appreciating high-quality journalism.3

To place this debate on firmer empirical grounds, we investigate—for the first time with a large population survey—what the public in a whole country (the Netherlands) actually expects from its news media and from the journalists working for those media, in terms of journalistic roles and professional standards, and in terms of what news media should cover.

Our findings reveal two main audience orientations toward news media. One of them is very much in line with journalists’ own professional understanding of their role in society. The other orientation is less geared toward the good of society as a whole, but more interested in the individual needs of the audience itself. We conclude, though, that audience members do not exclusively subscribe to one of these orienta-tions. Actually, very much like journalists, the audience has a more complex view of the roles of news media in society. Our findings show that there is a considerable com-mon ground for journalists and audiences to cooperate in shaping a better future for high-quality journalism.

The Netherlands

Our case is the Netherlands, a typical example of the democratic-corporatist model of journalism.4 This model is also represented in Scandinavia, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. It combines a high level of professionalization with some political parallelism. Individual journalists in the Netherlands are slightly politicized, that is, lean in their reporting to one or the other political direction, but ultimately they are obliged to the common good of society. The audience, in turn, is relatively strongly interested in news about public affairs, as is shown by a still-high newspaper circula-tion. Public broadcasting has a considerable market position, too, and contributes to a strong tradition of substantive reporting in the Netherlands.5 Public trust in news media, albeit on a downward trend, is still relatively high, compared to other countries.6

Journalism between Public Interest and the Audience

Research on audience perceptions and demands of news journalism is scarce and frag-mented. In contrast, scholars have been extensively and continuously tracking what journalists themselves think about their role in society, the standards they should observe, and the news they should provide.7 This is why we use this body of research as a source of inspiration for our inquiries into the views of the audience.

Journalistic Role Conceptions

In the United States, following the pioneering work of Johnstone, Slawski, and Bowman,8 Weaver and his colleagues have explored regularly and systematically how



van der Wurff and Schoenbach 435

journalists perceive their roles.9 In their research, they have defined four journalistic role conceptions. From the 1980s till the beginning of the twenty-first century, approx-imately 60% of U.S. journalists have embraced the so-called interpretive role.10 It implies that, in their news reporting, journalists analyze problems, discuss policies, and investigate government claims. The disseminator role has become less important over time. It demands that journalists get factual information as quickly as possible to as large an audience as possible. This role was strongly supported by about half of the U.S. journalists in the 1980s and 1990s, but only by 16% in 2002.11

Adversarial journalism confronts the government and big business and, thus, in the view of Weaver and Wilhoit, implies active participation of journalists in political affairs.12 The populist mobilizer instead aims to involve ordinary people in public dis-course—a role model advocated since the 1990s by the public journalism movement in the United States. These two roles have remained much less popular among U.S. journalists. The adversarial role has been supported by less than a fifth of them. Agreement with the populist mobilizer role is even lower—even though it almost dou-bled from 6% to 10% between 1992 and 2002.13

In practice, few journalists subscribe exclusively to one role. Most of those who endorse the adversarial or populist mobilizer roles, for example, also adopt the inter-pretive one, and more than half of the journalists with an interpretive role also see themselves as disseminators, and vice versa.14

Although the United States is a typical representative of the liberal model of journal-ism,15 the four role conceptions identified by American scholars can also be found outside that country.16 For instance, as many as about half of the journalists in twenty-one countries around the world consider “reporting the news quickly” (characteristic of the disseminator role) “extremely important,” as well as “providing analysis and interpretation” (an impor-tant element of the interpretative role). “Providing access for the public,” on average, is less crucial, but still considered “extremely important” by about a third of journalists. “Providing entertainment,” in contrast, is not a major goal for most journalists. A mere fifth of all jour-nalists in twenty-one countries find this role very important.17

In the democratic-corporatist Netherlands, too, many journalists have called their most important tasks to provide analysis and interpretation (considered “very impor-tant” by 44% in 1999 and still 37% in 2006) and to get information to the public quickly (43% in 1999, 33% in 2006). Investigating government claims and providing the public with an opportunity to express itself were less popular among Dutch jour-nalists (25% and 29%, respectively, in 1999, 18% and 13% in 2006). Providing enter-tainment and creating a good environment for advertisers, finally, were regarded as the least important (11% and 5% in 1999, 8% and 4% in 2006).18

Journalistic Values

To fulfill their roles in society appropriately, most journalists—especially in western democracies—feel that they should closely follow joint professional values.19 They agree on the importance of hard evidence and reliable sources in their reporting and on keeping one’s own beliefs and convictions out of it.20




In the Netherlands, too, a large majority (more than 60%) of the journalists in 2006 considered autonomy, objectivity, hearing both sides, and fact-checking “very impor-tant” journalistic values. Neutrality was next (45%). In addition, 50% of journalists in the Netherlands found it very important to consider “who my audience is”—but not too extensively: “Serving the audience” went too far for most of them; no more than 19% called this important.21

In a 2010 Dutch Delphi study, sixty experts of journalism (editors-in-chief, journalism professors, leaders of journalism organizations, and media lawyers) even claimed that adhering to journalistic values ultimately distinguishes journalists from other, non-jour-nalistic, providers of topical information on public affairs.22 Very much in agreement with the journalists, the experts named fact-checking and hearing both sides as crucial values to be observed by all journalists and news media. Equally important for the experts were the clear separation of editorial and commercial content, the full disclosure of sources, transparency in general (i.e., showing the audience how news is produced), not lying to get information, and reporting in an understandable language. The support for these val-ues was so unanimous among the sixty participants of that Delphi study that these norms could be considered the core standards of journalistic ethics in the Netherlands.23 Responding to audience demands, in contrast, was named by the experts—again much like the journalists in 2006—as the least important value for journalism.

In sum, at least in 2006, journalists in the Netherlands emphasize their interpretive and disseminator roles and subscribe to journalistic values supporting those roles. Their ultimate raison d’être—in their self-perception—is to provide good public ser-vice to democracy. This certainly includes accountability to the audience, for example, by clearly identifying the sources of stories and explaining the production of news. However, providing entertainment and closely responding to audience demands do not belong to the journalists’ standard role conception.24

The View of the Audience

Compared with the evidence on journalists’ ideas about the features and purposes of their products, research on what the audience thinks about journalistic roles and norms for news production is scarce. We know what people use the news for—that is, the gratifica-tions they seek: information, entertainment, opinion formation, and social utility—and how this affects news media use25 and types of stories selected.26 We also know a bit about news characteristics that make it more likely that audiences indeed obtain the gratifica-tions they are looking for—for example, the variety and immediacy of news.27

Other studies of the audience have focused on the declining trust in news media. Systematic survey research, conducted in the United States, for example, shows that the percentage of people with little to no trust in news media grew from 26% in 1976 to 60% in 2012.28 For Europe, the Eurobarometer survey suggests more stability during the last fifteen years.29 In the Netherlands, 35% did not trust the media in 1997 and 33% in 2010. This is a considerable part of the population but still smaller than in Denmark (50% in 1997 and 51% in 2010), Germany (51% and 45%, respectively), and particularly the United Kingdom (80% and 79%).30




A number of studies from different time periods give some indication of what the U.S. audience considers good journalism.31 Citizen complaints registered between 1973 and 1983 at the National News Council in the United States suggest that at least those who complain expect journalists to perform their disseminator role well. They demand that journalists transmit all the facts, without bias, to the public.32 In the early 1980s, citizens found it important that newspapers keep them informed about not only local, but also national and global, events. Explaining events is the third most impor-tant characteristic of good news for the audience. Journalists, on the other hand, con-sider explaining news, as well as the traditional watchdog role, the most important.33

Ten years later, in the early 1990s, readers and editors in the United States agree on the importance of many “standards of newspaper excellence,”34 such as integrity, inde-pendence, and accuracy. But readers emphasize decency and a lack of sensationalism more than editors.35 Investigative reporting in general is appreciated by the audience, but specific research techniques (e.g., journalists concealing their identity) raise more eyebrows, especially of those citizens who perceive news media to be inaccurate, biased, and excessively critical anyway.36

Again ten years later, the American audience—when interviewed about local news—found it very important that news is accurate, unbiased, and presents a diver-sity of viewpoints.37 The traditional roles of being a watchdog and reporting instanta-neously (traditionally important to U.S. journalists) were less appreciated by the public. Instead, the audience more strongly supported the public journalism or populist mobilizer function of providing a community forum.38

In Germany, in 2007, 61% of the citizens said they respected journalists, but—strangely enough—only 35% trusted them.39 On the positive side, a majority praised journalists as independent and hardworking. But they were also perceived to be less considerate, tolerant, social, and respectful to other people than the public wants them to be. No surprise, then, that a large minority was not satisfied with the news that these journalists deliver: Between 30% and 40% thought that the news is “manipulated, too prosaic, too sensational and frivolous.”40 Small-scale qualitative research,41 in addi-tion, suggests that German citizens want news media to critically follow government and other powerful institutions, to make people aware of important issues, and to pro-vide objective coverage with a clear separation of facts and opinion—which seems to point at supporting a mix of the interpretive and disseminator roles.

A third country on which we could find some data is Israel. Although this country certainly differs from the United States and Germany, the available evidence suggests once more that the public and journalists have partly different expectations: The public wants factual news, whereas journalists find it more important to provide analysis and interpretation.42

Audience Interest in News Topics

Several studies have compared audiences’ preferences for news topics with those of the journalists. The results are ambiguous.43 Some suggest that the majority of the audience resembles journalists in their preference for serious, hard news about public




affairs.44 Other studies indicate that most people seek entertainment and soft news, for example, on sports and crime. These conflicting results may simply be caused by con-flicting demands depending on what is happening in society at a given moment. When there are important political or economic developments, audience preferences seem to align more closely with those of the journalists for public-affairs news, while at less critical times, journalists and audience preferences may diverge.45 For example, young people in the Netherlands like infotainment programs on TV—fully aware that these do not provide serious news. At the same time, they insist that high-quality—albeit boring—news media offerings should be available for consultation once important events unfold.46

Research Questions

Our literature review shows little systematic knowledge on how the audience looks at news media. The central aim of our study is to explore—for the Netherlands as an example of a democratic-corporatist media system—what the audience actually expects from its news media and the journalists working for those media.

Based on the scarce evidence so far and our more extensive knowledge of what jour-nalists themselves think, our study focuses (1) on how audience members in the Netherlands see the roles of journalism in society, (2) on the norms that, according to the Dutch population, should guide journalists in their news production, and (3) on what kind of news they typically should cover. In addition, we explore how audience demands are related to age, gender, education, and social class—personal characteristics that plau-sibly influence what one expects from news media—and to news media use.

Method

Our results are based on a large-scale survey, representative of all adult citizens (18 years and older) in the Netherlands. It was conducted between October 19 and November 1, 2011—a calm period in terms of discussions about the media’s role in society and its quality. The survey was commissioned by the Dutch Media Ombudsman Foundation and paid for by the Netherlands Press Fund, a tax-funded but independent organization to advance the quality of news media in the Netherlands. For the sample, we used the online panel of the opinion research company TNS NIPO, with about 20,000 members, representative of the adult population of the Netherlands. In this country, as many as 94% of the population were online in 2011.47 So, possible bias caused by omitting people without Internet access is probably very small. From the online panel, 4,308 persons were randomly selected and asked via email to participate, and 3,203 respondents completed the twenty-minute questionnaire, a response rate of 74%.48 To increase the representativeness of the findings, the data are weighted by gender, age, education, region, family size, and vote at the last national election.

The survey items were derived from the sources cited in our literature review, in particular from the Weaver and Wilhoit studies on journalistic role conceptions, and from our own Delphi study on journalism in the Netherlands. Some items were slightly




rephrased to make them more comprehensible for a Dutch lay audience.49 Although this step was necessary to ensure valid responses, it suggests caution when comparing journalist and audience responses.

Measurement of Audience Demands

To assess what the audience expects from Dutch news media, respondents got a list of twenty-one statements on journalistic role conceptions and values and indicated on a scale from 1 (= totally unimportant) to 5 (= very important—scores 2, 3, and 4 were not verbalized) how important it is to them personally that news media in the Netherlands subscribe to these conceptions and values.50

The list of role concepts included ten items that were randomly rotated in our ques-tionnaire. Two items described tasks traditionally associated with the disseminator role (e.g., “get news to the public as quickly as possible”). Three were used to gauge the populist mobilizer role (e.g., “give ordinary people a chance to express their view”). Two items covered the interpretative role (e.g., “explain social issues”). Two other items represented the more critical aspects of the interpretative role in combina-tion with the adversarial role (e.g., “critically follow government”). The final item expressed the “entertainment and relaxation” function of news media.51

Next, we included four statements designed to address traditional journalistic values (e.g., “separate facts and opinion”), three on accountability (e.g., “explain how news items come about”), and four on news media responsiveness to the audi-ence (e.g., “respond to audience complaints”). The items were again rotated randomly.

In addition, we assessed the respondents’ interest in different news topics. Respondents indicated on a scale from 1 (= not at all) to 5 (= very) how much they were interested in news on social issues (e.g., environment, economics, or health care), on politics and politicians, on celebrities, on ordinary people, and on crime and acci-dents, respectively.

Background Characteristics

To analyze whether and how citizens differ in what they expect from news media and their journalists, audience characteristics that are plausibly related to those opinions were gauged. These include sociodemographics and news media use. Sociodemographics—gender, age, education, and social class52—were provided by TNS NIPO, the fieldwork company. News media use was assessed in our survey after the questions about values and role conceptions. First, we asked respondents how many days a week they followed the news on six news channels (newspapers, TV, radio,53 videotext,54 online news, and social media). Next, we asked how valuable dif-ferent news outlets (i.e., specific newspapers and TV news programs) are to them personally as news sources—on a scale from 1 (a source that you most likely never use to stay informed about what’s going on around you) to 5 (a favorite source of informa-tion for you on recent domestic and foreign events).




Results

The Dutch respondents follow the news very closely. Only 2% claims, in a typical week, not to receive any news from any source. A large majority (85%) instead watches, reads, or listens to the news at least five days a week.

The most popular news source is TV. TV news and current-affairs programs are viewed on average five days a week by Dutch citizens (SD = 2.3). Next are online news (3.8 days per week, SD = 2.8), radio news (3.8 days per week, SD = 2.6), (paid or free) daily newspapers (3.5 days per week, SD = 2.6), and news on videotext (2.9 days per week, SD = 3.0). Social media closed the ranking (1.3 days per week, SD = 2.5). Taking all news media together, Dutch adults on average use 2.9 of these six news channels per day.

Audience Demands

What do citizens expect from the journalists who produce the news? Our survey included ten items to represent four journalistic role conceptions, but a principal com-ponent analysis55 revealed only two—more general—orientations (shown in Table 1). The first factor (eigenvalue 3.19, five factor loadings > .64, 32% of variance explained) can best be interpreted as a primarily critical and interpretive professional-journalistic orientation. Both the immediacy of reporting and the watchdog role are important here, as well as the demand that news media enable citizens to develop their own opinions.

The second factor (eigenvalue 2.61, five factor loadings > .57, 26% of variance explained) combines commercial and populist mobilizer aspects. Their common dimension is a focus on the user, who should be able to contribute to the news and to participate in debates on current affairs. Also, news should be made attractive to large groups of citizens. Based on these two factors, we constructed two indices: a profes-sional role conception (five items, α = .83) and a user-oriented one (five items, α = .75).

The audience rates the professional, mainly interpretative, role of journalists as a little more desirable compared with the user-oriented one. The average difference between the respective items is about .5 points on our five-point scale. The preferences for these two roles are also somewhat connected (r = .56, p < .001). The majority (62%) finds both of them important (mean index scores > 3.0), 27% evaluates only the professional role as really crucial and merely 1% the user-oriented one.

Journalistic values. Respondents find it important that news media openly admit mis-takes, are independent, clearly distinguish advertising from news, separate facts and opinion, and present alternative viewpoints as completely as possible (Table 2). In addition, news media should be transparent in their work and respond to audience complaints and demands.

A principal components analysis suggests three factors among these journalistic standards. The first one (eigenvalue 3.13, 28% of variance explained) comprises




expectations that news media adhere to traditional journalistic values (five factor load-ings > .69, α = .83). They include “openly admitting mistakes,” an item that we origi-nally regarded as indicating accountability (see above).56 But for the audience, it clearly belongs to classic journalistic “do’s.” The other two indices represent the gen-eral demand that news media should be responsive to their audience (eigenvalue 2.34, four factor loadings > .68, 21% of variance explained, α = .75) and the claim that they should be accountable and transparent to their audience (eigenvalue 1.50, two factor loadings > .69, 14% of variance explained, α = .66). The mean scores for these indices show that our respondents consider all three types of values important, with traditional values being a little more relevant than accountability and responsiveness.

As with the journalistic role conceptions, the dimensions of journalistic values are interrelated too. Respondents who consider traditional values important also think that accountability is relevant (r = .57, p < .001). The other correlations are lower, but still show that people who appreciate accountability also value responsiveness (r = .47, p < .001), and those who attach great value to key journalistic values are also more likely to deem responsiveness important (r = .40, p < .001). Put differently, our data reveal that about half of the audience (51%) thinks that all three dimensions are at least some-what important (mean index scores > 3.0).

Interest in news topics. A principal components analysis shows that audience interest in news topics falls into two categories, represented by indices with decent reliability scores (Table 3). Following Boczkowski,57 we label the first index interest in public-affairs news, such as news about political and social issues (eigenvalue 1.72, two factor loadings > .88, 34% of variance explained, α = .77), and the other index repre-sents interest in non-public-affairs news, such as news about crime, accidents, ordinary

Table 1. Importance of Journalistic Role Conceptions.

How important is it to you personally that news media in the Netherlands . . . M SD

Professional orientation index 3.9 0.6 Get news to the public as quickly as possible 4.1 0.8 Critically follow government 4.0 0.8 Explain social issues 4.0 0.8 Enable readers, viewers, and listeners to develop their own opinion 3.8 0.8 Critically follow big business 3.7 0.9User orientation index 3.4 0.7 Give ordinary people a chance to express their view 3.5 0.9 Report on events that interest large groups of people 3.4 0.9 Stimulate people to participate in debates on important social issues 3.4 0.9 Enable people to contribute to the news 3.3 0.9 Provide entertainment and relaxation 3.2 1.0

Note. N = 3,203. Cell entries are means and standard deviations. All items are scored on five-point scales from 1 (not at all important) to 5 (very important).




people, and celebrities (eigenvalue 1.63, three factor loadings > .69, 33% of variance explained, α = .59). A quarter of the sample (26%) indicates to be at least moderately interested (mean index scores > 3.0) in both types of news. Yet almost a third (32%) has no strong interest in either type (mean index 3.0 at most). The rest is either strongly interested in public-affairs news (30%) or non-public-affairs news (12%). This is why interest in public-affairs news is only weakly related to interest in non-public affairs (r = .28, p < .001).

Civic and Citizen Demands

Intuitively, we expect citizens’ demands of journalistic roles and values and their inter-est in a specific category of news to be related to each other. And, indeed, a second-order principal component analysis of the indices described so far clearly shows two dimensions. The first meta-factor (eigenvalue 2.44, 35% of variance explained) reveals positive relationships between the indices for the professional-journalistic role, tradi-tional journalistic values, accountability, and interest in public-affairs news. These four indices (with factor loadings > .68) add up to a reliable second-order index (α = .76 for the indices it includes). We propose calling it the Civic Demands index because it combines audience expectations focusing on the traditional informational and demo-cratic role of media in society.

The user-oriented index, the journalistic-responsiveness one, and the index of inter-est in non-public-affairs news load together on the second factor (eigenvalue 2.06, three indices with factor loadings > .70, 29% of variance explained), constituting a

Table 2. Importance of Journalistic Values.

How important is it to you personally that news media in the Netherlands . . . M SD

Traditional journalistic values index 4.1 0.6 Are independent 4.2 0.9 Clearly separate news from advertisements 4.2 0.8 Openly admit mistakes to audiences 4.1 0.8 Strictly separate facts and opinion 4.1 0.8 Report different views in society as completely as possible 4.0 0.8Accountability index 3.5 0.8 Clearly indicate journalistic principles 3.6 0.9 Explain how news items come about 3.4 0.9Responsiveness index 3.5 0.7 Respond to audience complaints 3.8 0.8 Consider audience wishes 3.6 0.9 Bond with viewers, readers, and listeners 3.3 0.9 Side with ordinary people when reporting on conflicts 3.3 1.0

Note. N = 3,203. Cell entries are means and standard deviations. All items scored on five-point scales from 1 (not at all important) to 5 (very important).




Citizen Demands index (α = .72 for the indices included here). This index encom-passes more selfish expectations of the audience: Journalists should more seriously consider the experiences, contributions, complaints, and desires of individual citizens. Such a catalog of demands is connected to more interest in non-public-affairs news and to the valuation of responsiveness.

Both meta-indices, Civic and Citizen Demands, are related (r = .45, p < .001). Indeed, two-thirds of the respondents (64%) find both types of requests important (mean index scores > 3.0). An additional quarter (25%) only expresses Civic Demands more strongly, whereas the proportions of people favoring only Citizen Demands or none at all are negligible (3% and 8%, respectively).

Attributes of People with Different Demands

How common among the Dutch are the demands for news media and their journalists that we described so far? Are there groups in society with different types of expecta-tions? To find out, we regress Citizen and Civic Demands on sociodemographics. The findings show that better educated respondents have stronger Civic expectations, whereas lower educated ones show stronger Citizen expectations (Table 4). We also note that older people favor both types more strongly, in particular Civic expectations of news media. Finally, we note that, after the other sociodemographics are controlled for, respondents from a higher social class and males tend to express marginally weaker Citizen Demands too.

Audience Demands and Media Use

Plausibly, audience expectations of news media and their journalists are related to the use of news media. Indeed, regression analyses show first of all that people with stronger

Table 3. Audience Interest in News Topics.

Generally speaking, how interested are you in news on . . . M SD

Public-affairs news index 3.4 0.9 Social issues (environment, economy, social integration, education, health

care)3.7 1.0

Politics and politicians (The Hague, Parliament, ministers, elections, political parties)

3.1 1.1

Non-public-affairs news index 3.0 0.7 Crime, accidents, safety 3.4 0.9 Ordinary people 3.2 1.0 Movie stars, media personalities, prominent sports people, and other

domestic and foreign celebrities2.4 1.0

Note. N = 3,203. Cell entries are means and standard deviations. All items are scored on five-point scales from 1 (not at all interesting) to 5 (very interesting)




Citizen Demands, especially those with stronger Civic Demands, tend to turn more often to the news in general, and in particular to traditional news media (TV, newspa-pers, radio, and videotext; see Table 5). In addition, we find that respondents with higher Civic Demands use more online news, whereas those with stronger Citizen Demands more frequently turn to social media. These findings are all controlled for sociodemographics.

Because these categories of media types sometimes contain fairly different news media outlets (e.g., TV news encompasses both commercial and public news broadcasts), we end our analysis by exploring the relationship between Civic and Citizen Demands, on the one hand, and preferences for selected news outlets, on the other. The dependent vari-able here is not actual news media use (in days per week) but a self-report of how impor-tant a specific news outlet is to respondents (indicated on a five-point scale). The four outlets investigated were deliberately selected as mainstream news media that cater to relatively large audiences and at the same time represent different media genres and edito-rial policies. They are the mass tabloid De Telegraaf versus the quality newspaper NRC Handelsblad and the commercial infotainment TV program Hart van Nederland versus the public-service TV current-affairs magazine Nieuwsuur.

This preliminary analysis shows that Citizen Demands are positively related to favoring tabloidized news services, whereas Civic Demands are connected to a pref-erence for quality news services (see Table 6). But, interestingly, these are differ-ences in degree only. As many as 91% and 87% of those respondents who regard

Table 4. Sociodemographic Predictors of Civic and Citizen Demands.

Civic demands Citizen demands

Gender (male = 1) .03 −.06 **Age .37 ** .16 **Education .17 ** −.18 **Social class .05 −.11 **Adjusted R2 .16 .11

Note. N = 3,203. Entries are standardized OLS regression coefficients.**p < .001.

Table 5. Civic and Citizen Demands as Predictors of News Media Use.

News TV Newspapers Online Radio Videotext Social media

Civic demands .26 ** .18 ** .09 ** .15 ** .11 ** .06 * .00Citizen demands .06 * .08 ** .06 * .02 .06 * .09 ** .12 **Adjusted R2 .21 .25 .17 .08 .03 .03 .10

Note. N = 3,203. Entries are standardized OLS regression coefficients. The regressions are controlled for Gender, Age, Education, and Social Class but only results for Civic and Citizen Demands are reported. News = news in general.*p < .01. **p < .001.




tabloid titles De Telegraaf and Hart van Nederland as important find Civic Demands for the news media desirable. Conversely, 55% and 72% of the people who attach great value to quality news media NRC Handelsblad and Nieuwsuur also express Citizen Demands.

Discussion

The audience in the Netherlands considers both the professional and the more user-oriented role conceptions of journalism important—with the professional one as more crucial, however. The professional role emphasizes the imperative to disseminate news as quickly as possible, and to interpret it as well. In contrast, the user-orientation role combines tasks that journalism research has classified under the populist mobi-lizer role and more market-oriented functions of news media (to provide entertain-ment, to be attractive for large audiences).

The relatively strong support of the audience for the professional role that we found in 2011 in our survey seems to align relatively well with the view of the Dutch journal-ists. Albeit five years earlier, in 2006, they too emphasized the interpretive and dis-seminator tasks,58 as did the experts in our 2010 Delphi study.59 Whether journalists also share the audience’s (slightly weaker) appreciation of the user-oriented role can-not be determined on the basis of available data.

When we look at journalistic values, a slightly different picture emerges. The Dutch audience considers journalistic independence crucial for journalism. Other more tradi-tional norms are also strongly endorsed by the public—to separate news from advertis-ing, to distinguish between facts and opinion, to present a diversity of viewpoints, and to correct mistakes.

Again, we can only cautiously compare these findings with the statements of jour-nalists and experts in previous studies. The similarity between the answers of these groups is striking, though. Journalists in 2006 rated autonomy as the most important value,60 and experts in 2010 emphasized the need to separate editorial from commercial

Table 6. Civic and Citizen Demands as Predictors of the Perceived Importance of Specific News Offerings.

Tabloid news media Quality news media

De Telegraaf Hart van Nederland NRC Handelsblad Nieuwsuur

Civic demands −.16 ** −.25 ** .35 ** .24 **Citizen demands .27 ** .37 ** −.25 ** −.02Adjusted R2 .10 .27 .28 .16N 2,227 2,906 1,871 2,628

Note. Entries are standardized OLS regression coefficients. Regressions are controlled for Gender, Age, Education, and Social Class, but only results for Civic and Citizen Demands are reported. N varies because people who do not use a particular medium (e.g., newspapers) at all were not asked to rate titles of that medium.*p < .01. **p < .001.




information and facts from opinions.61 Both citizens and experts furthermore agree that journalists should be transparent in and accountable for their work—that they should explain to the audience how news items are constructed.

Audience demands start to diverge, though, from professional and expert views in the Netherlands once we look at responsiveness. As we know, the Dutch audience shares the journalists’ professional expectations. But it also expects journalists to side with the people and to listen to their complaints and desires. Journalism experts, on the other hand, deemed responding to audience demands in 2010 as not that important,62 and journalists felt the same in 2006 about serving the audience.63 Along the same lines, case studies suggest that journalists in the Netherlands only pay lip service to this request for responsiveness.64

Civic and Citizen Demands

On a meta-level, the Dutch audience expresses both Civic Demands and Citizen Demands, with a preference for the former. Civic Demands build upon the professional role conception of journalists, emphasizing their interpretive, critical, and disseminat-ing tasks. In other words, Civic Demands mirror traditional ideas about the social role of news media as a “fourth estate,” providing information on public affairs instead of entertaining the audience. Civic Demands also call for getting the news to the people as quickly as possible, for following both government and businesses critically, and for insisting on journalistic independence. Citizen Demands, in contrast, emphasize more strongly the populist mobilizer role. They ask for a responsive journalism, attrac-tive news content, and audience participation in the news process.

Correlates and Implications of Audience Demands

Our findings are based on a large-scale representative survey. This should lend some validity to our conclusions. But at the same time, we must acknowledge limitations: our study relies on self-reports. Thus, we can only draw conclusions about what citi-zens expressed as their intentions and expectations, not about their actual choices or behavior. Context validity may apply, though, because of the plausible relationships that we found between our measures of Civic and Citizen Demands, on the one hand, and sociodemographics and news media use, on the other hand.

Overall, our findings show that better educated people express stronger Civic Demands, whereas lower educated people have more Citizen Demands. Civic Demands in particular go along with a higher level of news consumption in general, with a greater proportion of traditional news media (TV, newspapers, radio, and Videotext), and with a stronger preference for quality news outlets.

Interestingly, preferences for specific online forms of communication vary with audience demands. Civic Demands prevail for those who more frequently use online news. Social media, on the other hand, are more often used by people with stronger Citizen Demands.65 This indicates a certain division of labor between the newer chan-nels. Quite plausibly, news websites seem to be preferred as disseminators and interpreters




for current affairs. Social media, instead, are used more often for populist mobilizer functions. This warrants further investigation.

Conclusion

Our findings are limited to the news audience in the Netherlands at the beginning of the twenty-first century. We hope that our study will be replicated in other countries, to com-pare audience demands across cultures and time (as is already possible for the views of journalists), and perhaps even across media outlets and communication channels. Ensuring comparability with journalist surveys is an important aim in this respect.

Conceptually, we believe that, on the basis of our findings, it makes sense to explore further the usefulness of the categories of Civic and Citizen Demands to understand and predict the different ways in which audiences engage with news media. These constructs seem to integrate the different kinds of the views, needs, and wishes of news media users. They also correlate plausibly with media use. We hope they stimu-late more systematic research into the needs and wishes of audiences—an area of inquiry that has been neglected too long, especially given the shifting power relations between (what used to be) senders and receivers in the current media environment.

For news media and journalists in the Netherlands, our findings are both comfort-ing and challenging. The audience is not as uninterested and hedonistic as is often assumed in the public debate. Nor can its members be separated simplistically into those who are interested in quality news and those who are not. Instead, the audi-ence—like journalism itself—shows a complex understanding of the roles that media should play in society and the values that journalists, accordingly, should uphold. Crucially, the audience shares with journalists the notion that news media have an important and independent function in modern democracies.66 Journalists should feel reassured by this. The audience wants them to act as serious conveyors and interpret-ers of what is going on in the world. It accepts and respects journalistic roles and values.

Hopefully, these findings inspire journalists to reciprocate and take the public into account more actively and explicitly because the audience also expects journalists and news media to respond to the expectations, needs, and complaints of individual citi-zens as news media users. Our findings show that responsiveness to these demands does not automatically happen at the expense of journalistic quality. This should make us confident that there is room for journalists and citizens to work together in securing a socially relevant future for professional journalism.

Acknowledgment

We thank the editor and the three reviewers for their valuable comments.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.




Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was part of a research project commissioned by the Dutch Media Ombudsman Foundation and supported by the Netherlands Press Fund, a tax-funded but independent organization to advance the quality of news media in the Netherlands.

Notes

1. Jo Bardoel and Leen d’Haenens, “Media Meet the Citizen: Beyond Market Mechanisms and Government Regulations,” European Journal of Communication 19 (2, 2004): 165-94; Yael de Haan, “Between Professional Autonomy and Public Responsibility: Accountability and Responsiveness in Dutch Media and Journalism” (PhD diss., University of Amsterdam, 2012); Jane B. Singer, “Journalism Ethics amid Structural Change,” Daedalus 139 (2, 2010): 89-99.

2. Kees Brants and Yael De Haan, “Taking the Public Seriously: Three Models of Responsiveness in Media and Journalism,” Media, Culture & Society 32 (3, 2010): 411-28; David Domingo, “Interactivity in the Daily Routines of Online Newsrooms: Dealing with an Uncomfortable Myth,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (3, 2008): 680-704; George A. Gladney, “How Editors and Readers Rank and Rate the Importance of Eighteen Traditional Standards of Newspaper Excellence,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 73 (2, 1996): 319-31; Tanni Haas and Linda Steiner, “Public Journalism: A Reply to Critics,” Journalism 7 (2, 2006): 238-54.

3. Irene Costera Meijer, “Waardevolle Journalistiek: Op zoek naar kwaliteit vanuit het gezich-tspunt van de gebruiker” [Valuable Journalism: Searching for Quality from the User’s Perspective], Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap 38 (3, 2010): 223-31; Shanto Iyengar, Helmut Norpoth, and Kyu S. Hahn, “Consumer Demand for Election News: The Horserace Sells,” Journal of Politics 66 (1, 2004): 157-75.

4. Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini, Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

5. Kees Brants and Philip van Praag, “Signs of Media Logic. Half a Century of Political Communication in the Netherlands,” Javnost—The Public 13 (1, 2006): 25-40.

6. Richard van der Wurff and Klaus Schoenbach, “Audience Expectations of Media Accountability in the Netherlands,” Journalism Studies 15 (2, 2014): 121-37.

7. See, for example, David H. Weaver and Lars Willnat, The Global Journalist in the 21st Century (NY: Routledge, 2012), who provide a comparison of the journalist profession in thirty-one countries; and Thomas Hanitzsch, Folker Hanusch, Claudia Mellado, Maria Anikina, Rosa Berganza, Incilay Cangoz, Mihai Coman, et al., “Mapping Journalism Cultures across Nations: A Comparative Study of 18 Countries,” Journalism Studies 12 (3, 2011): 273-93, who compare journalistic cultures across 18 countries.

8. John W. C. Johnstone, Edward J. Slawski, and William W. Bowman, “The Professional Values of American Newsmen,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (4, 1972): 522-40.

9. David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American Journalist: A Portrait of U.S. News People and Their Work (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American Journalist: A Portrait of U.S. News People and Their Work (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American Journalist in the 1990s: U.S. News People at the End of an Era (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996); David H. Weaver, Randal A. Beam, Bonnie J. Brownlee, Paul S. Voakes, and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American Journalist




in the 21st Century: U.S. News People at the Dawn of a New Millennium (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007).

10. Bonnie J. Brownlee and Randal A. Beam, “U.S. Journalists in the Tumultuous Early Years of the 21st Century,” in The Global Journalist, ed. David H. Weaver and Lars Willnat (NY: Routledge, 2012), 357; Weaver and Wilhoit, The American Journalist (1991), 116.

11. Brownlee and Beam, “U.S. Journalists,” 357; David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American Journalist (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 116.

12. Weaver and Wilhoit, The American Journalist (1986); Weaver and Wilhoit, The American Journalist (1996).

13. Brownlee and Beam, “U.S. Journalists,” 357; Weaver and Wilhoit, The American Journalist (1996), 137.

14. Brownlee and Beam, “U.S. Journalists,” 358; Weaver and Wilhoit, The American Journalist (1991), 116.

15. Hallin and Mancini, Comparing Media Systems.16. Mark Deuze, “National News Cultures: A Comparison of Dutch, German, British,

Australian and U.S. Journalists,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 79 (1, 2002): 134-49; Hanitzsch et al., “Mapping Journalism Cultures”; Weaver and Willnat, The Global Journalist (2012).

17. David H. Weaver and Lars Willnat, “Journalists in the 21st Century. Conclusions,” in The Global Journalist, ed. David H. Weaver and Lars Willnat (NY: Routledge, 2012), 529-51.

18. Deuze, “National News Cultures”; Alexander Pleijter, Liesbeth Hermans, and Maurice Vergeer, “Journalists and Journalism in the Netherlands,” in The Global Journalist, ed. David H. Weaver and Lars Willnat (NY: Routledge, 2012), 242-54.

19. Hanitzsch et al., “Mapping Journalism Cultures.”20. Hanitzsch et al., “Mapping Journalism Cultures,” 282-83.21. Pleijter, Hermans, and Vergeer, “Journalists and Journalism in the Netherlands.”22. Richard van der Wurff and Klaus Schoenbach, “Between Profession and Audience,”

Journalism Studies 12 (4, 2011): 407-22.23. Van der Wurff and Schoenbach, “Between Profession and Audience.”24. See also De Haan, “Between Professional Autonomy.”25. Angela M. Lee, “News Audiences Revisited: Theorizing the Link between Audience

Motivations and News Consumption,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 57 (3, 2013): 300-17.

26. Evan N. Ben-Porath, “Connecting with the News through Affective Expectations: Antecedents and Outcomes” (paper presented at the annual convention of the International Communication Association, Dresden, Germany, 2006).

27. John Dimmick, Yan Chen, and Zhan Li, “Competition between the Internet and Traditional News Media: The Gratification-Opportunities Niche Dimension,” Journal of Media Economics 17 (1, 2004): 19-33; Richard van der Wurff, “Are News Media Substitutes? Gratifications, Contents, and Uses,” Journal of Media Economics 24 (3, 2011): 139-57, 142.

28. “Media Use and Evaluation,” Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/poll/1663/Media-Use-Evaluation.aspx (accessed December 19, 2012).

29. The standard Eurobarometer is a regular public opinion survey conducted twice a year on behalf of the European Commission in all EU member states. We consulted all Eurobarometer Reports published between 1998 and 2011.

30. European Commission, “Eurobarometer” (48, 1998) and (74, 2011), http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb_arch_en.htm (accessed May 3, 2011).

31. See also Gladney, “How Editors,” for a summary of older research in the United States.


http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb_arch_en.htm



32. Sandra Braman, “Public Expectations of Media versus Standards in Codes of Ethics,” Journalism Quarterly 65 (1, 1988): 71-77.

33. Judee K. Burgoon, James M. Bernstein, and Michael Burgoon, “Public and Journalist Perceptions of Newspaper Functions,” Newspaper Research Journal 5 (1, 1983): 77-89.

34. Gladney, “How Editors.”35. Gladney, “How Editors.”36. Lars Willnat and David H. Weaver, “Public Opinion on Investigative Reporting in the

1990s: Has Anything Changed since the 1980s?” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 75 (3, 1998): 449-63.

37. Don Heider, Maxwell McCombs, and Paula M. Poindexter, “What the Public Expects of Local News: Views on Public and Traditional Journalism,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 82 (4, 2005): 952-67.

38. Heider, McCombs, and Poindexter, “What the Public Expects”; see Deborah S. Chung, “How Readers Perceive Journalists’ Functions at Online Community Newspapers,” Newspaper Research Journal 30 (1, 2009): 72-80, who also found relatively strong support for the populist mobilizer role among a small sample of online local community newspaper readers.

39. Wolfgang Donsbach, Mathias Rentsch, and Anna-Maria Schielicke, “The Ethics Gap. Why Germans Have Little Esteem and No Trust in Journalists” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Chicago, IL, 2009).

40. Donsbach, Rentsch, and Schielicke, “The Ethics Gap,” 17.41. Sandra Lieske, Das Image von Journalisten. Eine qualitative Untersuchung [The

Image of Journalists. A qualitative investigation] (Wiesbaden, Germany: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2008).

42. Yariv Tsfati, Oren Meyers, and Yoram Peri, “What Is Good Journalism? Comparing Israeli Public and Journalists’ Perspectives,” Journalism 7 (2, 2006): 152-73.

43. Pablo J. Boczkowski and Eugenia Mitchelstein, “Is There a Gap between the News Choices of Journalists and Consumers? A Relational and Dynamic Approach,” International Journal of Press-Politics 15 (4, 2010): 420-40.

44. See also Klaus Schoenbach, “Does Tabloidization Make German Local Newspapers Successful?” in Tabloid Tales: Global Debates over Media Standards, ed. Colin Sparks and John Tulloch (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 63-74; Klaus Schoenbach, “Factors of Newspaper Success: Does Quality Count? A Study of German Newspapers,” in Measuring Media Content, Quality, and Diversity: Approaches and Issues in Content Research, ed. Robert G. Picard (Turku, Finland: Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, 2000), 85-96.

45. Boczkowski and Mitchelstein, “Is There a Gap.”46. Irene Costera Meijer, “The Paradox of Popularity,” Journalism Studies 8 (1, 2007): 96-116.47. “Level of Internet Access: Households,” Eurostat, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/

table.do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=tin00134&plugin=1 (accessed October 18, 2012).

48. See, for example, Yehuda Baruch and Brooks C. Holtom, “Survey Response Rate Levels and Trends in Organizational Research,” Human Relations 61 (8, 2008): 1139-60.

49. For example, “providing analysis and interpretation of complex problems” became “explaining social problems.”

50. News media were defined on the first page of the questionnaire as “the media that daily provide us with news and topical information about recent events inside and outside our country. We are talking paid and free dailies, newscasts and other topical information


http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=tin00134&plugin=1



programs on radio and television, news on Videotext, and websites with news and other topical information. These news media may report about, among other things, the econ-omy, sports, politics, accidents, media, health and prominent Dutch people.”

51. The complete list of all items and their exact wordings can be derived from Tables 1 to 3.52. Social class is assessed per household in five categories, based on the education and the

profession of the main wage earner. This is a standard approach used by the major opinion research companies in the Netherlands.

53. In the survey, we distinguished between listening to radio news (short bulletins that are regularly broadcast on most radio stations every hour or even every half hour) and listening to current-affairs programs. In the final analysis, we define radio use (in days per week) as the maximum number of days that respondents indicated listening either to radio news or current-affairs programs.

54. Videotext (aka teletext) is a one-way text-based information system that is displayed on the television (TV) screen where it temporarily replaces the program watched. Viewers can use the remote control to select pages with the latest news, weather and traffic information, TV schedules, sports news, and other types of information.

55. All reported principal component analyses used varimax rotation.56. See Keith P. Sanders, “What Are Daily Newspapers Doing to Be Responsive to Readers’

Criticisms?” News Research Bulletin 9 (November 1973): 61-80.57. Boczkowski and Mitchelstein, “Is There a Gap,” 425.58. Pleijter, Hermans, and Vergeer, “Journalists and Journalism in the Netherlands.”59. Van der Wurff and Schoenbach, “Between Profession and Audience.”60. Pleijter, Hermans, and Vergeer, “Journalists and Journalism in the Netherlands,” 251.61. Van der Wurff and Schoenbach, “Between Profession and Audience.”62. Van der Wurff and Schoenbach, “Between Profession and Audience.”63. Pleijter, Hermans, and Vergeer, “Journalists and Journalism in the Netherlands,” 252.64. De Haan, “Between Professional Autonomy.”65. We thank a reviewer for drawing our attention to this finding.66. This conclusion is strikingly similar to conclusions formulated almost twenty years ago for

the United States, in Gladney, “How Editors.”

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